


Muscle, Sinew, Metal, Glass.

by Artemis_Crimson



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Blood and Gore, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, High Chaos (Dishonored), High Chaos Emily Kaldwin, Lich Au, corvo and the outsider and in the background, might be a second chapter?, no canoodling, ooo the edge, this is a thousand words of murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:08:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22223086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Artemis_Crimson/pseuds/Artemis_Crimson
Summary: In which Emily takes it back, and then a little bit more still.
Kudos: 12





	Muscle, Sinew, Metal, Glass.

The blast from the magic that renders Delilah mortal once more knocks them both off their feet. Emily is still clawing her way up, fist clenched around slowly warming dead meat while Delilah has already ascended into the air and challenged her to follow. A whirling portal forms ahead of the painting where Delilah bleeds from existence and her mind spins along with it.

She’s hip deep in the blood she’s spilt to get here, soaked and splattered head to toe.  
Dark magic sparks in her hand and runs down her spine. She’s bested her father in genuine contests between the two of them twice before, and her race back home has only sharpened her skill. Besides, Emily is angry enough to shred her dear aunt with her bare hands.  
No shadow sharp talons needed. Still as she gets up and stares at that anti-void abomination, she wonders if that will be enough.

Will and cunning second to none the Outsider said, that Delialh tore out a piece of herself and hid it to make herself immortal.  
She’d wondered, and wonders still if he had showed Delilah that same courtesy of information. What he whispered about her if so.  
The heart is heavier than ever in her hand. She’s not a witch, not like Delilah. Four months with real magic isn’t enough time to truly learn it, no matter her past daydreams and idle interest. But she remembers enough ancient ephemera to attempt something reckless.

A will second to some, a thing made of both bones and sinew.

(A gift of change, from a guided visit to the grave that made a god.)

All she has to do now is rip a piece of herself out.

She ends up dropping her sword, unmarked hand clutching at her mouth in the same motion she knows will knock someone out when she’s a shadow creature. Something clings to her hand, like a leaden cobweb.  
It hurts, it bites like insect venom, like watching her family die around her again and again. Like a fall taken wrong like the disappointment of court like being run through the gut with a sword. It brings Emily to her knees once more but she keeps pulling through the rush of blood in her ears until the heart in her chest stops and the one in her hand starts again.

Delilah’s spirit had called to go back into her body. Her Mother’s only wanted oblivion at the end. Whatever Emily's managed to put in the Heart is silent for a long moment, beat slowing to a gentle thrum.

_We both want revenge, forget your hesitation and go solve everything. ___

__She almost snorts, this is what she gets for listening to her heart. Emily dismisses it into the shadowy other where she usually hides it, alongside inactive charms and unused bones. She brushes herself off and twirls her father’s sword to it’s full length, with one last fond look and a promise to free him she dips her hand in the swirling ether._ _

__

__The World As It Should Be is, dull. White skies, white marble floors and dark shards of false void stone grow from a shaky island in the middle of nothing. Jagged statues like the ones guarding the path to the tower or the ones on the ritual island dot the stairway in frozen infatuation. (She wonders if Delilah learned her petrification trick there). The air is still, still and dry and carries the same warmth as skin. The colourless dead mess all flows down a flat path to a replica of her throne.  
It’s pathetic.  
Emily knows somehow that this must have taken years of study and dedication, that this is a unique work of magic just as much art as anything else Delilah makes and yet all she can see when she surveys her masterpiece is something worth pitying. She looks over it twice with human eyes and then pulls a third eyelid of magic over her sight to check again. The figure on the throne rings hollow but she can’t see Delilah and, if she’s honest Emily wants an excuse to try this out. To test herself.  
She squares her shoulders and walks to the doppelgänger like any petitioner._ _

__“So naive dear Emily.”_ _

__She snorts unladylike beneath her silk scarf. The copy disappears and then teleports behind her, swinging a whalebone sword that she just barely catches on her hilt. She draws her pistol smooth as any gunslinger and fires point blank. The pain and shrapnel staggers her, it’s child’s play to knock the blade away and slice off her leg, stabbing down into the stone through her chest.  
Emily whirls and aims the gun up when she hears another transversal behind her and fires blindly just catching another replica off guard. Her sword is sharp, her mind is alive and she’s strong enough to cleave her in two_ _

__She holsters her pistol and flings a shadow wreathed hand across the arena to pull herself into a collision course with a newly awakened copy. It’s cathartic to leave her imbedded sword in her collar and snap her neck for good measure, unsheathing it from the corpse and dropping a spring razor by its head. When she skips back letting two more teleport in, finally giving up on Emily letting her guard down in favour of outnumbering her._ _

__It doesn’t matter because they’re shredded to mincemeat as soon as the pair lands. She’d missed the final copy blinking up behind her until the last second and pays for it with a cutting blow to her inner thigh.  
Even now Delilah wants to watch her suffer, but she’d taken blows as harsh as that back in Karnaca and limped away victorious with help from the Outsider’s gift. Now the most troublesome thing about the arterial spurt of blood is finding a good grip on the blood slick marble._ _

__She exhales and finds the cold swell of the void within her, wearing shadow like a familiar coat. She drops to the floor and grabs the mimic in rat talon sharp hands.  
She hoists her up by her arm and leg and Emily pulls her in half, spine popping apart easily under the tension. A spool of guts falls to the ground that she claws through for good measure as her form drops. The action won’t make her heart pound anymore, she doesn’t burn pleasant with exertion but Emily can’t remember feeling so alive._ _

__Delilah stops gloating and appears halfway across the room from her. Her anger at being defied feels like a heatwave through the tepid air and when she finally breaks the silence her howl hits like a punch from Corvo.  
Emily fires two crossbow bolts in quick succession and Delilah casts a wave of thorns. Emily looses sight of her only for the moment it takes to block one of the blasted things from her face, the other finding it’s home in her side. A long enough distraction for Delilah to raise a Bloodbriar from the stonework. It swipes with eyeless sight at Emily and she catches a pillar in a shadow hand to dodge out of its way, throwing her last grenade at its roots._ _

__Delilah can’t help but flinch at the blast and reveal her shape among the statues.  
Emily’s heel hits the pillar and momentum keeps her in the air long enough to reach out again to where the smoke from Delilah’s magic peaks out from the veil and marks where she’ll be next. Emily lands running with a snarl hidden and Delilah just manages to catch her blow, sneering right back nonetheless. It’s a contest of strength more than skill.  
Even if Delilah got it through her thick skull she’s fighting for her life it’s still not one she’ll win. Her sword trembles minutely before it’s wrenched out of her hand._ _

__She looks stunned and Emily punches her like it’s a street brawl. She sinks her own thin metal blade into Delilah’s shoulder, not deep enough to sever the arm and, to her credit she manages to throw her off for a moment.  
Emily keeps a firm grip on her sword and takes a firmer one on Delilah’s throat. Cartilage crunches under her fingertips and they’re practically cheek to cheek for her to hear it. She pulls back, just barely, for a better view. Watches closely at how her face goes twitches in pain then goes slack when she’s stabbed through the ribs.  
She falls like any other body. 

__Emily looks to where she came and sees the way back into the world, and then back to the cooling corpse at her feet. She pulls the glowing wood out of her side, tossing it carelessly away, wipes the sword clean on its coat before folding it away and braces her boot on its chest to pick a trophy. The brambles snap eventually, ragged with stripes of both their skin but the blossom is pristine still. She spares one last look to the carnage, a glance at her already healed hand before stepping back into reality._ _


End file.
